Rolling Your Own

A lot of people appreciate the simple convenience of going to a store to purchase what they need.  More often than not, these things aren't necessities, but luxuries...and consequently cost quite a bit of money.  Being a dyed-in-the-wool "roll-your-own-er" I find it almost embarrassing to be found around those people.  They shuffle like drones into markets or try to barter for their addiction from back-alley "retailers."  Sure, there's the speed at which you may get your fix, but I like slowing down and enjoying the process.  Savoring each moment as I anticipate the reward at the end.

I don't really remember exactly when I learned to roll my own, but I'm pretty sure it was when I was quite young and living in Powell.  My Mom was well versed at this technique and taught me at the very tender age of, oh, about 10.  Before you judge her, just let me tell you that she was simply educating me in the pure simplicity of the proper technique, ensuring me that this skill would become invaluable over the course of my life.  Sure, you'll make a mess and likely drop quite a bit before you get the hang of it, and you will make a mess of your clothes.  Those negatives aside, just remember you'll just flat out look cool.  It hasn't happened yet, but I imagine some older gal with a "whiskey tenor" emerging from the brush to watch me work my magic.  She will talk around her manufactured cigarette and say, "Hey cowboy.  Care to roll some of those for me?"  I'll coolly glance in her direction, letting my hands and fingers continue their work while I graciously agree.  I mean come on!  That's just the essence of cool; a young gentleman sitting in the brush by the side of a dusty country road helping an older gal finish filling her bucket of huckleberries.

Now, there are a lot of various techniques for gathering huckleberries...and I have tried them all.  I'm sure at first, it was the "Blueberries for Sal" method.  That way is the simplest, but it doesn't yield many berries...since after the ku-plink, ku-plink, ku-plink....you have to eat those three berries and repeat.

The more common technique adopted by young and old alike is actually considered "picking" huckleberries.  In this method, the person will hold the bucket with one hand and use the other hand to pick individual berries from the bush.  One berry, one plunk.  One berry, one plunk.  This is the "zen" method as it takes forever to quit hearing the "plunk" of berries on the empty bottom of your bucket.  One truly has to adopt the "I'm here to meditate" attitude...not the production attitude.

An advanced version of "picking" is what I tend to resort to when I get back into picking after a long winter.  First, you must tie your bucket to your belt as to free both hands for agility.  Then, you grab the bush and twist is upside down as to see the berries better.  Your free hand grabs berries and cups them until you start dropping more than you can retain, at this point, a truly ambidextrous "picker" will simply switch hands and fill up the other.  This eliminates the need to make frequent movements to and from the bucket, which easily saves a quarter second of time....giving the "picker" the illusion of quick progress.

An altogether cheating form of picking is using a commercial picker.  It's basically a can with tines sticking out the front of it.  You rake the bushes and pick up EVERY berry (ripe or not), sticks, bugs, leaves, pine needles....you get the picture.  It's a quick way to move, but the amount of time saved is lost as soon as you get home to clean all the sticks, bugs, leaves, and pine needles out of the good berries.  I tried to modify this design the other day with an old government-issued water bottle with the bottom cut out.  On the narrow side I made little notches and then used this to basically pick the berries one by one.  It did cut out some time as I didn't have to cup the berries in my palm, but it would "throw" berries that popped off their stems as well as collect a lot of leaves.  I quickly discarded this idea as being too much of a pain in the ass, and it felt like a whole lot like work.

Finally we get to the master's art of "rolling."  After a frustrating beginning to my evening last night, I gave up on the homemade picker and started flat-out "picking."  Eventually something clicked in my mind and I remembered how to roll my own!  First of all, we're having a phenomenal huckleberry season so far and they're big as well as plentiful.  So all you have to do is sit yourself in a patch and beeennnd the bushed to you and over the bucket that's tied to your belt.  Then, while you hold the bush to maneuver it around, you use your dominate hand to roll the berries off their stems.  With the bucket directly under the bush, there is no cupping or losing berries...you simply release them from their stems and gravity puts them into your bucket for you.  This is by far the fastest and most efficient method I've found.  Oh, and you WILL find yourself "scootching" rather than standing up to move.  From your seated position, you'll clear out the berries within arms reach...but then see another DANDY bush just out of reach...this will require you to "scootch" over to it on your butt.  Of course, this results in stained trousers as you will "scootch" over plenty of dropped berries, but it's also an effective way to get back down to the road.  Just pay attention lest you end up at the truck in a hurry.  (See below for how to find the best huckleberry patch.)

So I must, out of respect, thank my Mom for teaching me how to "roll my own" at an early age.  It sure has come in handy, and this year already has yielded us about a gallon and a half of berries...and the season has just begun!

By the way, ever wonder how to find a dandy huckleberry patch without walking a mile into the woods?  (No no no, I really do like going on a hike THEN picking...gets you away from the noise, commotion, and dust.)  But if you're in a hurry, simply drive to a popular picking spot.  You can identify these areas easily by looking for 20 random passenger cars parked at rakish angles along wide spots in a dirt road.  Around here, that's typically around a hill aptly named, "Huckleberry mountain."  Now that you've found the spot, just drive down the road until you find the steepest cutbank you can.  All you have to do is park, find a way to the top of the cutbank, and pick away.  Those berries WILL be the best and biggest, because it seems like nobody will bother going into the woods without first SEEING the berries out their car window.  Needless to say, they also don't like to walk more than 20 yards to "pick." 

Now, how about a smattering of photos from yesterday evening's trip?



Cruddy photo, but LOOK at them all!  (This was from where I was sitting.)



Yep, that's a huckleberry

 

Huh.  Look!  Another huckleberry.

 

I haven't removed my canoe in awhile.  I get a lot of weird looks when I'm out in the woods.



Bucket o'berries

 

I think this is neat because you can see my fingerprints

  

An example of an "impassable" cutbank.  I was up top there.

A nice boost!

I made an inquiry yesterday, and received a very positive boost.  I wrote this (names...except mine...omitted):

I recently applied for the position mentioned below; I’m sure you remember me bugging you over and over.

I was wondering if you’d be able to give me some information that may assist me in the future as it concerns to competing for this level of position.  I understand this is a complex position with a lot of various duties and skill sets needed and preferred; are there any in particular areas that I may be able to work on / gain more experience in?  I’m just curious as to what development I could use to further expand in this field.

Thank you for your time over the past couple of months.  I hope to stay in touch!

Thanks in advance!

Within an hour, I got this as a response:

Tom: You were very competitive for this position. We had a very robust certificate of candidates. If I had any advice its continue to obtain depth and breath (sic) of experience including supervision. There are no glaring deficiencies in your portfolio and I believe you are and will continue to be very competitive at the GS 11 level.

Now isn't THAT a nice boost!!?

Well, I figured I couldn't beat that for the day, so took off into the woods.  I was on another recon mission for huckleberries and wanted to check a place I typically find some decent berries.  The drive was uneventful but blissful, if nothing else but because of the fact that I was the ONLY person out there!  I found the berries at that elevation to still be green, so beat feet back home.  There, I was able to quickly grab Sarah and Lucca and head down to the lake.  We all swam for about an hour and then finally noticed it was after six!  What in the world happens to time after you leave work? 

So while Sarah made a run to the store, I quickly got stuff together and got the elderberry wine started!  It's sitting right now, waiting for the yeast to be added tonight.  This one's tough though...I went into a store to buy yeast and Camden tablets the other day and my grand total came to three dollars!  I didn't want to put three dollars on my card, so I picked up another five gallon carboy.  All of a sudden I was now going to make five gallons of an untested recipe using an untested fruit (at least by me.)  Needless to say it makes me a little nervous.  Since I only had 10 lbs instead of the recommended 15lbs of elderberries, I added one less teaspoon acid blend...hoping that will accomplish the necessary "tartness" of the finished product.  (The sweetness comes from the berries themselves since any sweetener...er, sugar...added only gets turned into alcohol.)  But I DID read that the berries could be used as a second run batch to make a rose wine...so I figure this is going to work out alright.  Already the color of the "must" is a nice dark reddish-purple.  Boy I hope the yeast takes!

So there, Butch and Matt.  All those berries I was picking while I should have been hunting elk were finally put to use!  I'll let you know how it tastes in a year.

Well, they say a picture is worth a thousand words

This is for your last comment Z.

Another one?!

Well, on Saturday I got up bright and squirrly and decided to finally try fishing the main Coeur d'Alene lake.  I made it to the access around 0700 and was on the water by 0730.  The trick around here, is to be on (and off) the water prior to the insane boat traffic...which....generally starts around 1100.  The water was nice and calm but it was already starting to heat up, so I stuck to the docks and tried for bass before trying my hand at trolling for kokanee.  Seriously, on the FIFTH cast I bounced my grub off a piling and it sunk.  As I began my retrieve I got hooked up.  What?  Really?  Hooked the piling?  So I set the drag and started getting ready to paddle over to get unsnagged when the rod bent over!  WTF?!  I wrassled this critter for awhile and saw flashes once and awhile of something BIG in the black water.  My thoughts kept coming to "chinook" which we do have in the lake and some are dandies!!  But what was it doing way back in here?  Well the monster tired pretty quickly (compared to that smallmouth) and I was able to get a good luck at it's face.  It's ugly, flat, HUGE, alligator face; a pike!  And I am not kidding when I say this thing was 24 inches plus, my biggest pike ever!  I started to get kinda nervous as I didn't have any gloves with me and I didn't want to get torn up grabbing this thing...so instead I went for my camera.  As I was setting up for a shot of him in the water beside the boat, he lept into the air like your classic marlin-shaking-twisting jump!  If I had been smart, I would've just snapped the photo, but I didn't, and as he reached the apex of his jump....the grub came flying out of his mouth.  He did a 180, hit the water head first in a perfect dive, and was gone.

Yet again, I sat there in stunned disbelief.  I was bummed that I didn't get a photo, but honestly, I was kinda glad for the long release.  ;)

The rest of the mile-long paddle resulted in a couple small bass and not much else.  When the boat traffic picked up I tied on a small spinner and started trolling my way back up to the launch.  Nada!  Well, I got all loaded up and headed home...leaving all the gear in the truck for whatever Sunday had in store.  That afternoon it became blazing hot, so Lu-dog and I tried to find a quiet place to get in the lake.  Boy was THAT a mistake!  Everyone and their brother's friend's dog were doing the same thing!  We circled around to Blue Creek bay...which Lucca thought was fun in itself.  She likes riding in the bed, especially when it has a canoe for shade above it!  Everytime I glanced at her she was leaning over the side and grinning like an idiot.  (She smells the water before she gets to it.)  The place I was gunning for was available!  I thought that was odd until I took a look down in there...hmmm, lotsa mud and weeds in about three feet of water.  Eww.  But, it was hot enough I didn't really care TOO much.  So I started hucking Lucca's dummy out there and got her further and further out...she really is showing her roots anymore.  At one point I decided to say, "screw the mud and weeds, I'm going in."  So we both swam around, trying to beat the other to the perpetually thrown dummy.

Which brings us to Sunday.  Another early morning and I decided to hit the river!  But this time, I was going to do a two-mile paddle to a honey hole Rod had shown me once in the past.  It was nice and quiet with only the occassional boat passing...but most of them were older and going nice and slow.  (No wakes.)  I made it to the honey hole in about an hour of paddling and only got a couple nimbles after hucking the lure around pilings and logs and whatnot.  Sure, I caught some small (maybe 10 inches?) bass but that was it.  Ugh, and by this time the river was becoming extremely busy...I guess everyone starts a little earlier on the river...it was only 0930.  And I honestly don't know what most of these folks are doing...they just drive up and down the river as fast as they can.  It's bizarre.  Well, pretty quick I got tired of dealing with it and made my way back downriver.  I got to the main eddy after almost being mauled by countless boats and didn't do too well there either.  The whole trip down was just the same small bass.  (Boy, am I getting picky already or what?)  By this time it was noon and extremely warm out; the bank's sign back in town said 96 degrees.  Well, I was the only one at the launch and again thought I could take my time, but JUST as I was thinking that a truck (with Kootenai county plates) with a big boat came down and just moved in on me!  *sigh* people.  Now unlike the Washington guys last weekend who just watched me fumble and struggle with the canoe, this guy jumped out, looked at the boat, the lumber rack and said, "Need help getting that up there?"  SURE!!!  He was really polite about it and asked for instructions on how I liked to do it and the extra muscle made it go super-quick.  I told him I'd get out of his way in a hurry and he simply replied, "Nononoo, take your time.  I'm just gonna get my trailer a little closer to your truck and unload it from there."  Wow, okay.  He got that done in no time and he and his wife and I talked about fishing.  I said I'd had better days and that, "it's just started getting too much traffic."  He laughed and said, "Annnnd, we're just going to add to it."  As I continued thanking him for the help they pushed off, gave me two big waves and hollered, "Have a great afternoon!"  I responded with a generic, "You too!  Thanks again!"  And they were gone.

That more than made up for the lady almost hitting me with her boat on her way out of a dock because, "I couldn't see you.  You're all green."  (Only the boat was green that day.)  *sigh* 

I raced home in the swarms of people to begin my three hour cleaning spree prior to Sarah's homecoming.  No, I'm not THAT much of a slob.  I just wanted her to be able to come home and relax without having to think about doing anything at all.  Aren't I sweet?

Nice Catch!

Sarah and I spent this last weekend at home.  She was getting prepared to go to Vermont and was cleaning and packing, so I decided to get out of her hair and do a little fishing.  I ended up doing pretty well over two days of fishing, even though the boat traffic was pretty heavy.  On sunday, I ended with the biggest bass I've ever caught in my life, and it was a smallmouth to boot!



At arms length



Er, again?



A little bit better with some scale in the photo



Modified photo with a measurement of my pole


It took me a little bit to get this guy in the boat, so I frantically dug for my camera and snapped those photos....yep, prior to releasing him.  Come on, it was the biggest bass I've ever caught!  That's got to be worth something right?  So I watched him swim off and sat there in almost stunned silence; I really haven't caught a fish that big in a long time.  So I cracked a beer and just enjoyed thinking about it.  Of course, that's when the boat pulled up next to me.  Two fellas in there trolling and the driver asks, "Having any luck?"  I looked at him like he was a moron (because I knew they watched the whole thing) and said, "Uhm, did you see the last one?"  He mumbled in a low tone, "yea."  So I followed with, "Well, I'd say I was doing fairly well then." 

The pulled off and proceeded to circle me for the next hour.  Long loops, but still, dogging a guy in a canoe?  It's not like I knew anything they didn't.  Tired of the company, I made my way downriver when the skies opened up and dumped a bunch of rain.  I donned the raingear and kept at it while EVERYONE else left the water.  It was blissful!  Unfortunately the rain didn't help the fishing at all and I basically got skunked the rest of my time out there, but I figured if nothing else I ended on a good note.